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Civ­i­liza­tional collapse

TagLast edit: 13 Sep 2023 7:13 UTC by Vasco Grilo🔸

A civilizational collapse (sometimes called a social collapse or a societal collapse) is a drastic decrease in human population size or in political, economic or social complexity across essentially the entire world, for an extended period of time. Civilizational resilience is humanity’s capacity to resist, or recover from, civilizational collapse.

In Toby Ord’s typology, unrecoverable civilizational collapse constitutes one of the three main types of existential catastrophe.[1]

Evaluation

80,000 Hours rates civilizational resilience a “potential highest priority area”: an issue that, if more thoroughly examined, could rank as a top global challenge.[2]

Further reading

Aird, Michael (2020a) Collection of sources that seem very relevant to the topic of civilizational collapse and/​or recovery, Effective Altruism Forum, February 24.
Many additional resources on this topic.

Aird, Michael (2020b) Civilization re-emerging after a catastrophic collapse, Effective Altruism Forum, June 27.

Denkenberger, David & Jeffrey Ladish (2019) Civilizational collapse: scenarios, prevention, responses, Foresight Institute, June 24.

Hanson, Robin (2008) Catastrophe, social collapse, and human extinction, in Nick Bostrom & Milan M. Ćirković (eds.) Global Catastrophic Risks, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 363–377.

Jebari, Karim (2019) Civilization re-emerging after a catastrophic collapse, EAGxNordics, April 7.

Ladish, Jeffrey (2020) Update on civilizational collapse research, Effective Altruism Forum, February 10.

Manheim, David (2020) A (very) short history of the collapse of civilizations, and why it matters, Effective Altruism Forum, August 30.

Rodriguez, Luisa (2020) What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)?, Effective Altruism Forum, December 24, 2020.

Tainter, Joseph A. (1989) The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wiblin, Robert & Arden Koehler (2020) Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy, 80,000 Hours, August 20.

Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2021) Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all, 80,000 Hours, November 19.

Wiblin, Robert, Luisa Rodriguez & Keiran Harris (2022) Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

Related entries

broad vs. narrow interventions | dystopia | existential catastrophe | existential risk | existential risk factor | movement collapse

  1. ^

    Ord, Toby (2020) The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, fig. 5.2.

  2. ^

    80,000 Hours (2022) Our current list of pressing world problems, 80,000 Hours.

What is the like­li­hood that civ­i­liza­tional col­lapse would di­rectly lead to hu­man ex­tinc­tion (within decades)?

Luisa_Rodriguez24 Dec 2020 22:10 UTC
296 points
37 comments50 min readEA link

Model­ling the odds of re­cov­ery from civ­i­liza­tional collapse

MichaelA🔸17 Sep 2020 11:58 UTC
41 points
10 comments2 min readEA link

Trade col­lapse: Cas­cad­ing risks in our global sup­ply chains

FJehn25 Apr 2024 7:02 UTC
9 points
1 comment8 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

What fac­tors al­low so­cieties to sur­vive a crisis?

FJehn9 Apr 2024 8:05 UTC
23 points
1 comment10 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

The end of the Bronze Age as an ex­am­ple of a sud­den col­lapse of civilization

FJehn28 Oct 2020 12:55 UTC
53 points
7 comments7 min readEA link

Miti­gat­ing x-risk through modularity

Toby Newberry17 Dec 2020 19:54 UTC
103 points
6 comments14 min readEA link

How long un­til re­cov­ery af­ter col­lapse?

FJehn24 Sep 2024 8:43 UTC
12 points
3 comments7 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

Map­ping out col­lapse research

FJehn7 Jun 2023 12:10 UTC
18 points
2 comments11 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

Si­mu­lat­ing the end of the world: Ex­plor­ing the cur­rent state of so­cietal dy­nam­ics modeling

FJehn15 Nov 2023 12:53 UTC
11 points
2 comments10 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

How much food is there?

FJehn2 Sep 2024 6:29 UTC
40 points
3 comments5 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

The Odyssean Process

Odyssean Institute24 Nov 2023 13:48 UTC
25 points
6 comments1 min readEA link
(www.odysseaninstitute.org)

A (Very) Short His­tory of the Col­lapse of Civ­i­liza­tions, and Why it Matters

Davidmanheim30 Aug 2020 7:49 UTC
53 points
16 comments2 min readEA link

On Col­lapse Risk (C-Risk)

Pawntoe42 Jan 2020 5:10 UTC
39 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

Up­date on civ­i­liza­tional col­lapse research

Jeffrey Ladish10 Feb 2020 23:40 UTC
56 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

Demo­cratic Resilience

FJehn26 Jul 2024 7:50 UTC
22 points
3 comments8 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

Im­prov­ing dis­aster shelters to in­crease the chances of re­cov­ery from a global catastrophe

Nick_Beckstead19 Feb 2014 22:17 UTC
24 points
5 comments26 min readEA link

Civ­i­liza­tion Re-Emerg­ing After a Catas­trophic Collapse

MichaelA🔸27 Jun 2020 3:22 UTC
32 points
18 comments2 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

What If 99% of Hu­man­ity Van­ished? (A Hap­pier World video)

Jeroen Willems🔸16 Feb 2023 17:10 UTC
16 points
1 comment3 min readEA link

Cli­mate anoma­lies and so­cietal collapse

FJehn8 Feb 2024 9:49 UTC
13 points
6 comments10 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

The Cred­i­bil­ity of Apoca­lyp­tic Claims: A Cri­tique of Techno-Fu­tur­ism within Ex­is­ten­tial Risk

Ember16 Aug 2022 19:48 UTC
25 points
35 comments17 min readEA link

What is the like­li­hood that civ­i­liza­tional col­lapse would cause tech­nolog­i­cal stag­na­tion? (out­dated re­search)

Luisa_Rodriguez19 Oct 2022 17:35 UTC
83 points
13 comments32 min readEA link

The great en­ergy de­scent (short ver­sion) - An im­por­tant thing EA might have missed

CB🔸31 Aug 2022 21:50 UTC
61 points
90 comments10 min readEA link

AGI safety and los­ing elec­tric­ity/​in­dus­try re­silience cost-effectiveness

Ross_Tieman17 Nov 2019 8:42 UTC
31 points
10 comments37 min readEA link

The Case for a Strate­gic U.S. Coal Re­serve for Cli­mate and Catastrophes

ColdButtonIssues5 May 2022 1:24 UTC
30 points
3 comments5 min readEA link

Sav­ing ex­pected lives at $10 apiece?

Denkenberger🔸14 Dec 2016 15:38 UTC
15 points
23 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] Why doesn’t WWOTF men­tion the Bronze Age Col­lapse?

Eevee🔹19 Sep 2022 6:29 UTC
16 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Cost-Effec­tive­ness of Foods for Global Catas­tro­phes: Even Bet­ter than Be­fore?

Denkenberger🔸19 Nov 2018 21:57 UTC
29 points
5 comments10 min readEA link

Ja­cob Cates and Aron Mill: Scal­ing in­dus­trial food pro­duc­tion in nu­clear winter

EA Global18 Oct 2019 18:05 UTC
9 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

Some his­tory top­ics it might be very valuable to investigate

MichaelA🔸8 Jul 2020 2:40 UTC
91 points
34 comments6 min readEA link

Things usu­ally end slowly

OllieBase7 Jun 2022 17:00 UTC
76 points
14 comments7 min readEA link

Notes on Hen­rich’s “The WEIRDest Peo­ple in the World” (2020)

MichaelA🔸25 Mar 2021 5:04 UTC
44 points
4 comments3 min readEA link

Luisa Ro­driguez: Do­ing em­piri­cal global pri­ori­ties re­search — the ques­tion of civ­i­liza­tional col­lapse and recovery

EA Global25 Oct 2020 5:48 UTC
11 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

Notes on “Bioter­ror and Biowar­fare” (2006)

MichaelA🔸1 Mar 2021 9:42 UTC
29 points
6 comments4 min readEA link

The most im­por­tant cli­mate change uncertainty

cwa26 Jul 2022 15:15 UTC
144 points
28 comments13 min readEA link

Start­ing the sec­ond Green Revolution

freedomandutility29 Jun 2023 12:23 UTC
30 points
3 comments1 min readEA link

ALLFED 2019 An­nual Re­port and Fundrais­ing Appeal

AronM23 Nov 2019 2:05 UTC
42 points
12 comments21 min readEA link

[Question] Is there a sub­field of eco­nomics de­voted to “frag­ility vs re­silience”?

steve632021 Jul 2020 2:21 UTC
23 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

My Cause Selec­tion: Dave Denkenberger

Denkenberger🔸16 Aug 2015 15:06 UTC
13 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

David Denken­berger: Loss of In­dus­trial Civ­i­liza­tion and Re­cov­ery (Work­shop)

Denkenberger🔸19 Feb 2019 15:58 UTC
27 points
1 comment15 min readEA link

Should we buy coal mines?

John G. Halstead4 May 2022 7:28 UTC
216 points
31 comments7 min readEA link

2021 ALLFED Highlights

Ross_Tieman17 Nov 2021 15:24 UTC
45 points
1 comment16 min readEA link

Is­lands, nu­clear win­ter, and trade dis­rup­tion as a hu­man ex­is­ten­tial risk factor

Matt Boyd7 Aug 2022 2:18 UTC
36 points
6 comments19 min readEA link

EA and the Pos­si­ble De­cline of the US: Very Rough Thoughts

Cullen 🔸8 Jan 2021 7:30 UTC
56 points
19 comments4 min readEA link

How you can save ex­pected lives for $0.20-$400 each and re­duce X risk

Denkenberger🔸27 Nov 2017 2:23 UTC
24 points
5 comments8 min readEA link

Alli­ance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) Progress Re­port & Giv­ing Tues­day Appeal

Denkenberger🔸21 Nov 2018 5:20 UTC
21 points
3 comments8 min readEA link

Ground­wa­ter De­ple­tion: con­trib­u­tor to global civ­i­liza­tion col­lapse.

RickJS3 Dec 2022 7:09 UTC
11 points
6 comments3 min readEA link
(drive.google.com)

William Mar­shall: Lu­nar colony

EA Global11 Aug 2017 8:19 UTC
7 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

Hu­man­i­ties Re­search Ideas for Longtermists

Lizka9 Jun 2021 4:39 UTC
151 points
13 comments13 min readEA link

EA re­silience to catas­tro­phes & ALLFED’s case study

Sonia_Cassidy23 Mar 2022 7:03 UTC
91 points
10 comments13 min readEA link

Should we be spend­ing no less on al­ter­nate foods than AI now?

Denkenberger🔸29 Oct 2017 23:28 UTC
38 points
9 comments16 min readEA link

Venn di­a­grams of ex­is­ten­tial, global, and suffer­ing catastrophes

MichaelA🔸15 Jul 2020 12:28 UTC
81 points
7 comments7 min readEA link

Juan Gar­cía Martínez: In­dus­trial al­ter­na­tive foods for global catas­trophic risks

EA Global21 Nov 2020 8:12 UTC
12 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

[Question] Book on Civil­i­sa­tional Col­lapse?

Milton7 Oct 2020 8:51 UTC
9 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

Quan­tify­ing the prob­a­bil­ity of ex­is­ten­tial catas­tro­phe: A re­ply to Beard et al.

MichaelA🔸10 Aug 2020 5:56 UTC
21 points
3 comments3 min readEA link
(gcrinstitute.org)

Art Recom­men­da­tion: Dr. Stone

Devin Kalish9 Jul 2022 10:53 UTC
15 points
2 comments1 min readEA link
(www.crunchyroll.com)

Causal di­a­grams of the paths to ex­is­ten­tial catastrophe

MichaelA🔸1 Mar 2020 14:08 UTC
51 points
11 comments13 min readEA link

Is Civ­i­liza­tion on the Brink of Col­lapse? - Kurzgesagt

GabeM16 Aug 2022 20:06 UTC
29 points
5 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

Some EA Fo­rum Posts I’d like to write

Linch23 Feb 2021 5:27 UTC
100 points
10 comments5 min readEA link

ALLFED 2020 Highlights

AronM19 Nov 2020 22:06 UTC
51 points
5 comments26 min readEA link

An­nounc­ing the EA Archive

Aaron Bergman6 Jul 2023 13:49 UTC
67 points
18 comments2 min readEA link

Nu­clear war tail risk has been ex­ag­ger­ated?

Vasco Grilo🔸25 Feb 2024 9:14 UTC
41 points
22 comments28 min readEA link

A Gen­tle In­tro­duc­tion to Risk Frame­works Beyond Forecasting

pending_survival11 Apr 2024 9:15 UTC
81 points
4 comments27 min readEA link

Two tools for re­think­ing ex­is­ten­tial risk

Arepo5 Apr 2024 21:25 UTC
82 points
14 comments25 min readEA link

Assess­ing Cli­mate Change’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Global Catas­trophic Risk

HaydnBelfield19 Feb 2021 16:26 UTC
27 points
8 comments37 min readEA link

Coun­ter­fac­tual catastrophes

FJehn20 Nov 2024 19:12 UTC
14 points
1 comment8 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

W-Risk and the Tech­nolog­i­cal Wavefront (Nell Wat­son)

Aaron Gertler 🔸11 Nov 2018 23:22 UTC
9 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

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JuanGarcia11 Nov 2024 22:50 UTC
31 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

How democ­racy ends: a re­view and reevaluation

richard_ngo24 Nov 2018 17:41 UTC
27 points
2 comments6 min readEA link
(thinkingcomplete.blogspot.com)

On the as­sess­ment of vol­canic erup­tions as global catas­trophic or ex­is­ten­tial risks

Mike Cassidy13 Oct 2021 14:32 UTC
112 points
18 comments19 min readEA link

[Question] What’s the like­li­hood of ir­recov­er­able civ­i­liza­tional col­lapse if 90% of the pop­u­la­tion dies?

simeon_c7 Aug 2022 19:47 UTC
21 points
3 comments1 min readEA link

In­ter­re­lat­ed­ness of x-risks and sys­temic fragilities

Naryan4 Sep 2022 21:36 UTC
26 points
7 comments2 min readEA link

13 Re­cent Publi­ca­tions on Ex­is­ten­tial Risk (Jan 2021 up­date)

HaydnBelfield8 Feb 2021 12:42 UTC
7 points
2 comments10 min readEA link

Mili­tary sup­port in a global catastrophe

Tom Gardiner24 Jan 2023 16:30 UTC
37 points
0 comments3 min readEA link

Philan­thropy to the Right of Boom [Founders Pledge]

christian.r14 Feb 2023 17:08 UTC
83 points
11 comments20 min readEA link

Speedrun: De­mon­strate the abil­ity to rapidly scale food pro­duc­tion in the case of nu­clear winter

Buhl13 Feb 2023 19:00 UTC
39 points
2 comments16 min readEA link

[Question] Is there an or­ga­ni­za­tion or in­di­vi­d­u­als work­ing on how to boot­strap in­dus­trial civ­i­liza­tion?

steve632021 Oct 2022 3:36 UTC
15 points
8 comments1 min readEA link

Pre­serv­ing our her­i­tage: Build­ing a move­ment and a knowl­edge ark for cur­rent and fu­ture generations

rnk830 Nov 2023 10:15 UTC
−9 points
0 comments12 min readEA link

Luisa Ro­driguez: How to do em­piri­cal cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion re­search

EA Global21 Nov 2020 8:12 UTC
7 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

2023 ALLFED Marginal Fund­ing Appeal

JuanGarcia17 Nov 2023 10:55 UTC
32 points
2 comments3 min readEA link

Ad­vice Wanted on Ex­pand­ing an EA Project

Denkenberger🔸23 Apr 2016 23:20 UTC
4 points
3 comments2 min readEA link

2022 ALLFED highlights

Ross_Tieman28 Nov 2022 5:37 UTC
85 points
1 comment18 min readEA link

Nu­clear Risk and Philan­thropic Strat­egy [Founders Pledge]

christian.r25 Jul 2023 20:22 UTC
83 points
15 comments76 min readEA link
(www.founderspledge.com)

[Question] What longter­mist pro­jects would you like to see im­ple­mented?

Buhl28 Mar 2023 18:41 UTC
55 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

The great en­ergy de­scent—Part 2: Limits to growth and why we prob­a­bly won’t reach the stars

CB🔸31 Aug 2022 21:51 UTC
19 points
0 comments25 min readEA link

Phy­to­min­ing for Effec­tive Altruism

Benjamin M.10 Sep 2023 21:03 UTC
17 points
3 comments29 min readEA link

X-Risk Re­searchers Sur­vey

NitaSangha24 Apr 2023 8:06 UTC
12 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

How Eng­ineers can Con­tribute to Civil­i­sa­tion Resilience

Jessica Wen3 May 2023 14:22 UTC
41 points
3 comments8 min readEA link

Mar­i­time ca­pa­bil­ity and post-catas­tro­phe re­silience.

Tom Gardiner14 Jul 2022 11:29 UTC
32 points
7 comments6 min readEA link

Why I think there’s a one-in-six chance of an im­mi­nent global nu­clear war

Tegmark8 Oct 2022 23:25 UTC
53 points
24 comments1 min readEA link

Ok Doomer! SRM and Catas­trophic Risk Podcast

Gideon Futerman20 Aug 2022 12:22 UTC
10 points
4 comments1 min readEA link
(open.spotify.com)

Les­sons from the past for our global civilization

FJehn10 Aug 2023 9:54 UTC
4 points
0 comments7 min readEA link
(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

Civ­i­liza­tion Re­cov­ery Kits

Soof Golan21 Sep 2022 9:26 UTC
25 points
9 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] Odds of re­cov­er­ing val­ues af­ter col­lapse?

Will Aldred24 Jul 2022 18:20 UTC
65 points
13 comments3 min readEA link

Short­en­ing & en­light­en­ing dark ages as a sub-area of catas­trophic risk reduction

Jpmos5 Mar 2022 7:43 UTC
27 points
7 comments5 min readEA link

The great en­ergy de­scent—Post 3: What we can do, what we can’t do

CB🔸31 Aug 2022 21:51 UTC
17 points
3 comments22 min readEA link

Model­ling civil­i­sa­tion be­yond a catastrophe

Arepo30 Oct 2022 16:26 UTC
58 points
5 comments13 min readEA link

[Question] Has any­one done an anal­y­sis on the im­por­tance, tractabil­ity, and ne­glect­ed­ness of keep­ing hu­man-di­gestible calories in the ocean in case we need it af­ter some global catas­tro­phe?

Mati_Roy17 Feb 2020 7:47 UTC
9 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

Beyond Sim­ple Ex­is­ten­tial Risk: Sur­vival in a Com­plex In­ter­con­nected World

Gideon Futerman21 Nov 2022 14:35 UTC
84 points
67 comments21 min readEA link

Bioweapons shelter pro­ject launch

Benevolent_Rain14 Jun 2022 3:44 UTC
75 points
19 comments8 min readEA link

Pre­serv­ing and con­tin­u­ing al­ign­ment re­search through a se­vere global catastrophe

A_donor6 Mar 2022 18:43 UTC
40 points
11 comments5 min readEA link

Base Rates on United States Regime Collapse

AppliedDivinityStudies5 Apr 2021 17:14 UTC
14 points
3 comments9 min readEA link